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I have an open source package. It comes in two forms: a no-cost one you can just download, and full-cost one where you pay me and I provide support. Both are MI

by dalke 10y ago

I have an open source package. It comes in two forms: a no-cost one you can just download, and full-cost one where you pay me and I provide support. Both are MIT-licensed. It's a Python library and set of command-line tools for chemical similarity search. I've had a few sales. Those plus support renewals make me about $25K/year. Consulting and custom software development augment my income. Recently I was at a workshop, and found that actually many companies use my software. I had no idea it was so widely used. One even presented the results of some 60 CPU days spent using my software. They used the no-cost version, and had never considered paying me for it. (I asked. They said they had no internal mechanism to give gifts to open source developers. I said I could offer them a PO. They said they would need to justify it. I said I had a new version with better performance and more capabilities. It was a frustrating conversation.) I am not convinced that the open source, no cost, business model, where you hope that people are "happy to buy a support contract", will work for this combination of product and field. It may be that there simply aren't enough users in my field to support an open source company in the way you describe. So while I know it works for some - as you said - I believe for me and this product, a non-free/open source license would make me more money than a free license. I have a few concrete problems I've come across in selling free sofware. Given that I distribute a software product, how do I provide an evaluation version of the newer, better library? Do I simply trust that they will either pay me or not use it? If they do use it anyway, do I shrug my shoulders and walk away? How do I do market segmentation? That is, if a non-profit research site, or academic group, wants to use my software, do I give them a discount? But these are also the groups where some graduate student might look at it, see that it's open source, and put it on their github account. Which is fine. I support them doing that. But I need to price things appropriately. So it's odd that I may need to charge more for academic groups than I do pharmaceutical company (pharma being my main customer base), because academic groups are riskier sales than pharmas. Now, I could simply give it away at no cost, and hope there is enough support contract interest for the future. But I get the strong sense that people will do a one-off purchase to get the software even if they aren't willing to get a support contract after they download and start using it.

open-source-ux 10y ago
Could your free version still be sold for a price but with limited or no support? For example, two licences 1. Commercial license, no support: pay $/£/€ amount 2. Commercial license with support: pay $/£/€ amount By commerical use, I mean companies or academic insitutions. Option 1 is cheaper, but presumably more than affordable for companies who want to use the software. I guess what I'm saying is that even when the software is open source, can you stipulate that payment is required if used by a commerical company or academic institution? Some companies may not pay, but I'm guessing many other companies will be happy to pay for option 1. Or am I being hopelessly naive?
- WalterBright 10y ago
  If you stipulate that payment is required for commercial use, companies will pay. My experience is that commercial companies by and large are honest and quite willing to abide by the terms.
- dalke 10y ago
  While possible, that runs into another question: why would someone pay for support when they already have the software? There are a few reasons: 1) they want to support new feature development, 2) they want to support me personally, or 3) they want support with understanding the API or doing integration. I think most F/OS software has lousy documentation. I think that's because developers rarely like to write documentation, because free documentation writers are rare as hen's teeth, and because users aren't willing to pay for documentation. Which is great if you want to sell your consulting services as well. That is, if the tool solves a problem, but is a hassle to use, then you get paid for configuration and customization. But that disincentivizes putting together a solid API with extensive documentation, where people don't need your help to understand how everything works. > "even when the software is open source, can you stipulate that payment is required if used by a commerical company or academic institution?" There are two issues. First, for the software to be open source, then there can be no legal mechanism to require later payment. What you propose is not "open source". That said, it's might be possible to have a side agreement which does that. That agreement might not be legally enforceable, but a company will likely comply anyway, because they made the agreement in the first place. But there's no way I'll obligate an academic group to pay me $20K should one of the grad students, or student with access to the shared disk, decide to redistribute it, after seeing that it's under an open source license. There's no way that will do me any long-term good.

by dalke 10y ago

open-source-ux 10y ago

Could your free version still be sold for a price but with limited or no support? For example, two licences 1. Commercial license, no support: pay $/£/€ amount 2. Commercial license with support: pay $/£/€ amount By commerical use, I mean companies or academic insitutions. Option 1 is cheaper, but presumably more than affordable for companies who want to use the software. I guess what I'm saying is that even when the software is open source, can you stipulate that payment is required if used by a commerical company or academic institution? Some companies may not pay, but I'm guessing many other companies will be happy to pay for option 1. Or am I being hopelessly naive?

WalterBright 10y ago
If you stipulate that payment is required for commercial use, companies will pay. My experience is that commercial companies by and large are honest and quite willing to abide by the terms.
dalke 10y ago
While possible, that runs into another question: why would someone pay for support when they already have the software? There are a few reasons: 1) they want to support new feature development, 2) they want to support me personally, or 3) they want support with understanding the API or doing integration. I think most F/OS software has lousy documentation. I think that's because developers rarely like to write documentation, because free documentation writers are rare as hen's teeth, and because users aren't willing to pay for documentation. Which is great if you want to sell your consulting services as well. That is, if the tool solves a problem, but is a hassle to use, then you get paid for configuration and customization. But that disincentivizes putting together a solid API with extensive documentation, where people don't need your help to understand how everything works. > "even when the software is open source, can you stipulate that payment is required if used by a commerical company or academic institution?" There are two issues. First, for the software to be open source, then there can be no legal mechanism to require later payment. What you propose is not "open source". That said, it's might be possible to have a side agreement which does that. That agreement might not be legally enforceable, but a company will likely comply anyway, because they made the agreement in the first place. But there's no way I'll obligate an academic group to pay me $20K should one of the grad students, or student with access to the shared disk, decide to redistribute it, after seeing that it's under an open source license. There's no way that will do me any long-term good.